Empyrean Challenge / Cluster Wars Forum

mhochler

Administrator

Registered: 2018-10-06

Posts: 33

S/C Design Page

An S/C Design Page is up.  Please check for accuracy and post bugs and requests for more enhancements.  It is my goal to have the on line tools eliminate much of the side calculations - for example how much FOOD the FRMs produce or how much FUEL it would take to fire the EWP and how much damage they could do.

JimW

Member

Registered: 2018-10-16

Posts: 2

Re: S/C Design Page

Beautiful start!  It's not mobile friendly, but I was still able to use it from my phone.  It does need some more details, like not allowing TL for fuel. I'll add more when I get a few minutes. It's a busy time of year!

However, it's a great start and I like the way your thinking

JayC

Member

Registered: 2018-10-15

Posts: 6

Re: S/C Design Page

I agree with Jim great start.
I noticed when you add a quantity of an item, such as 1,000,000 AUT-5, or 1E6 AUT-5, that both forms of entry will work.
However when you press the add item button, they will appear in the ship design in the form of entry that you originally wrote them.
I suggest that they always appear in the numeric form of entry.(  I think  it's both easier on the eyes and on the brain)

along such lines, I also noticed that items in the ship colony design,  for instance fuel,  have no commas to delineate the numeric form of entry.  when you look at a quantity of fuel and  let's say it is 100 million or  1 billion,  it is difficult to determine which is which when you are looking at a  10 or 11 digit long string of zeros with no commas to delineate them.

  Hopefully I have other suggestions soon.
also I did   not notice any way to save the design  once you have begun work on it.

JimW

Member

Registered: 2018-10-16

Posts: 2

Re: S/C Design Page

Now that I'm looking at this on my PC, it really looks good!

Here are some things that I had on my design spreadsheet that I think should be on this page:
- Jump range (based on lowest HEN TL - but, since you broke out max mass based on highest TL, that would be good to include as well)
- I had a Crew Stats section with excess/shortage of PRO, SLD(MRB), USK(AUT)
- Speaking of sections, I had calculated totals in groups for easy assessment like "Fuel Use", "Crew Status", "Crew needs", etc.  There will inevitably be a good amount of information generated here, so it would be a kindness to the user to break it up into logical sections.
- Combat factors ground and space
- Transport capacity for combat, TFR, and LOAD
- Along with Current Speed, I had "Loaded Speed", mostly for designing cargo and colonizing ships
- Of course, the ability to save the class once designed is important, but I'm sure that's where you were going anyways

Less important:
- Along with total mass, I had the mass number (the log() of the mass)
- I had a scratch-pad type area where I'd calculate FCT prod in a colony and compare that to the manufactured items in the ship to see how many of a class I could make per turn or year
- Aligning the objects on the page and maybe some borders to spruce it up for show

OK, the constantly spinning atom is making me dizzy!  Guess I shouldn't stare at it!

Excellent!  You don't let someone add a unit with a stupid count like e34598745!

Probably should disallow the E notation in the TL boxes.  I just added 100 ESH-2E4.  Maybe set an upper limit to match the limit for the game?

Right-justifying the numbers would help readability.

Regarding population and races, if the game continues to use different race numbers for population, I think it would be good to allow the user to NOT specify the race number, unless he really wants to.  Perhaps allow the user to specify a preference, but when the order is executed, the game should pull from whatever races are available in the S/C.

For deleting an item, I see that setting the item and TL, then setting the number to 0 makes the entry go away.  How hard would it be to add an "X" next to each line that would delete the line when clicked?

...and if that works, just clicking on the number you want to change and either changing it there or having the selection populate the edit boxes would be nice.

OK, that's enough.  I'm going to shut up before you vote me off the island!

mhochler

Administrator

Registered: 2018-10-06

Posts: 33

Re: S/C Design Page

Made an update to add comma separators and just saw your new comments.  There is a way to have the inputs and lists for ASM, UNA and NON/POP display in a column instead of across on a mobile device and I will try to figure that out next.  I appreciate all your insights and testing - progress depends mostly on time and learning more about JavaScript and the React Library.

mhochler

Administrator

Registered: 2018-10-06

Posts: 33

Re: S/C Design Page

Now mobile friendly!